the search for sustainability - the free 12 episode documentary feat. our own Paul Wheaton

Get the full video set here.




49 Concerned Citizens, Environmentally Conscious Educators, Musicians, International Authors, Green Business Owners, School Teachers And Politicians Urge Us To Realize, Re-Negotiate, And Reverse The Imminent 911 Global Emergency of the Health and Sustainability of Humanity and the Planet



There will be one episode aired each night between November 1st-12th for free!

Click Here to get access to The Search For Sustainability

Okay so I was pretty stoked about this just because I am always impressed with Nathan Crane's work (the creator/producer), but then I actually took a look at all the speakers and saw SO many amazing people that I got even more excited. Here are some of the people that are our friends that are in the film:

Dave Hunter (crown bees)
Jacqueline Freeman (reverence for bees)
Zach Weiss (holzer agroecology)
Sergei Boutenko (wild edibles everything)
Howard Story (wwoof thailand)
Doug Simons (Doug Simons - at least that's how I know him)
Marjory Wildcraft (grow your own groceries)
Toby Hemenway (gaia's garden and permaculture city)
Oh yeah and that Paul Wheaton guy.

From Nathan's email, he describes the free series a bit more:

After interviewing 49 leading visionaries in the sustainability movement, we've edited the content into 12 different facets of sustainability and look at everything from land, soil, water, and education - to politics, business, agriculture, self-reliance, and economics - all from the viewfinder of sustainability and regenerative living.

So, if you are interested, it starts on november 1 and one episode on each topic will be released every night after that.


Again, Click Here to get access to The Search For Sustainability

Thank you - this is amazing. I have been sharing it around and I hope many, many people watch it. THANK YOU! <3

Thanks, I shared it on Facebook

Awesome! Yeah I can't believe there are going to be 49 people in it! No wonder they had to put it into 12 mini-movies. Lol.

Just got a message from Nathan - he just put up a sneak peak video - it's some excerpts from episode 7!

Each episode of this documentary series has a theme. Episode 7 is about Sustainable Art, Music, and Media, and in this video you'll hear from some of the experts who are part of the documentary series, and you'll also get to enjoy an uplifting and powerful live performance filmed from Suns of the Earth. I know you need a wendesday afternoon pick me up!


The Sneak Peak Video Here!

Episode 1 is now currently live! Click here to watch for free! Note: this is only available for free until 9 pm EST. Then you'll have to pay for it.


The reason Episode 1 stops being free at 9 pm EST is because then Episode 2 airs at that time!

Looking forward to future episodes showing different approaches to sustainability.

Episode #1 was a little too fragmented and repetitious for my liking. I understand the desire to give some air time to each of the featured speakers - but I would have preferred more depth from just a few, instead of so many sound bites.

I'm afraid you will end up preaching to the choir. The average person can only take so many predictions of impending doom before they tune out.

Thanks for this, but I clicked on this in my email where titled: "Paul's cancer theory". So what is Paul's cancer theory and is it told in this first episode? BTW, it is disappointing to read one thing in the email, want to see/read it whatever, click to the site and find something completely different and nothing to do with as advertized. Much Thanks, Nick

Cassie Langstraat wrote:Episode 1 is now currently live! Click here to watch for free! Note: this is only available for free until 9 pm EST. Then you'll have to pay for it.


The reason Episode 1 stops being free at 9 pm EST is because then Episode 2 airs at that time!

Nick Dimitri wrote:
Thanks for this, but I clicked on this in my email where titled: "Paul's cancer theory". So what is Paul's cancer theory and is it told in this first episode? BTW, it is disappointing to read one thing in the email, want to see/read it whatever, click to the site and find something completely different and nothing to do with as advertized. Much Thanks, Nick

I said in the dailyish email that the stuff about paul's cancer theory was in episode 3.....

Steve Farmer wrote:Lots of hoops to jump thru to get access. Sign up, trust them with my email, confirm signup, vids only avail for 24h. Why? I will jump thru the hoops but the wider worldwide audience who don't know the wheaton/permies brand will just click right on by

i'm not as stingy with my email address as most people, so i can't really empathize there.. and honestly the fact that he's letting them be available for free at all is pretty amazing to me.. he traveled all over the country to get the footage and the actual video/editing production isn't free or cheap.. so i think kudos to nathan.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:
i'm not as stingy with my email address as most people, so i can't really empathize there.. and honestly the fact that he's letting them be available for free at all is pretty amazing to me.. he traveled all over the country to get the footage and the actual video/editing production isn't free or cheap.. so i think kudos to nathan.

Totally agree with you, but that's not the point I was making. Yes its perfectly valid to offer some valuable content for free then upsell more content once viewers are engaged. The way this is done however asks too much of the fickle internet user at large before they get a chance to see any content. Why not simply link to a page where all twelve vids are available? He'd get loads of bookmarks and repeat visits and then much more chance to upsell further content. By showing the vid free for 24 hrs then trying to sell a rerun he's basically asking for a donation as its a trivial task to save a youtube vid to disk for unlimited future viewing.

This is an amazing series, and I have so far enjoyed every single moment of it. Thanks, Nathan Crane, for sharing this for free!

I saw the 'trailer' and registered for the other episodes (for free), but I never received the messages about them.
When I got a 'dailyish' from here, it was too late to see the episode

Maybe Paul can get permission to embed the videos in this thread, with no time limits on viewing. Look how many times this thread has been viewed compared with the views on YouTube.

There is lots of Paul (wonderful stuff!) in episode 10 which is airing for another 12 hours or so (until 8 pm U.S. EST). I am LOVING this doc series. Thank you Nathan Crane and Cassie and Paul and all who contributed in bringing this to us! <3

Nathan came by here in june and stayed for (if I remember correctly) two days.

He got video of me, Sergei Boutenko (the wild edibles guy who happened to be here then - that's the lushness of the lab behind him), Dave Hunter (the world's leading authority on mason bees was here teaching part of the PDC - that's wofati 0.8 in the background) and Howard Story (the PRI certified PDC instructor from Canada/Thailand - that's the rock of basecamp behind him).

I also saw Marjory Wildcraft (of "Grow Your Own Groceries" fame, plus has been to the lab, plus we are REALLY grooving on working with Marjory), Zach Weiss (currently the only Holzer certified dude in the US, arranged oodles of Holzer stuff over the years and shares prolifically on permies), Toby Hemenway (author of "Gaia's Garden" and "Permaculture City") and Jacqueline Freeman (I refer to her stuff as "reverence for bees," in five of my podasts about six of my vidoes).

Here is a professional guy taking months to travel all over the place and collect this video. And then edit it all up. The guy has a huge network of connections and has put on conferences before.

I admit that when he came by I was baffled at how he can afford so much travel. And now I see it: he puts together this massive collection of videos and offers them for sale - but if people watch at just the right time, they can see it all for free. Frankly, I think this is really clever.

PLUS he is actively infecting brains with great permaculture info. Not only to his existing network, but he has a super smart recipe of connecting even more people to all of this. So all of that permaculture-brain-infecting stuff (especially MY stuff) is getting to a lot of brains that have never been touched before.

PLUS PLUS he and cassie have worked some sort of deal where we get a cut of the action of sales. So people can watch it for free, or people can buy the full set of videos. And if people buy the videos by going through cassie's links, the empire gets a sweet cut of the action.

PLUS PLUS PLUS whoever ends up with the most sales gets a huge promotion package of their stuff. I don't think cassie or I are gonna push too hard on this front - but it would be cool to tell the massive network about dvds and cards and stuff. Especially since a few pallets of cards will be showing up here any day and it would be nice to clear most of them out of here quickly. Plus the forums, the videos, the podcasts, the articles, etc.

It seems to me that what he is doing is really smart and professional. I thoroughly enjoy being part of stuff that is smart and professional. And I feel like I am learning a lot about how to get the permaculture word out in a smart and professional way in 2015.


There are suggestions in this thread about possibly better ways to do this. I would like to suggest to the suggestor to be the change you wish to see. Exercise the better business model.

Maybe Paul can get permission to embed the videos in this thread

If I do that, then I reduce income and I reduce my chances of getting a big bump in promoting my stuff to a big audience.

Plus, I prefer to respect the creator's wishes.

Anne Wilson wrote:There is lots of Paul (wonderful stuff!) in episode 10 which is airing for another 12 hours or so (until 8 pm U.S. EST). I am LOVING this doc series. Thank you Nathan Crane and Cassie and Paul and all who contributed in bringing this to us! <3

Looky thar! It's me!

- residual income streams
- giving a gift to your future self
- getting a million dollars
- getting out of the rat race
- build good things rather than being angry at bad guys


It looks like I'm in about 2 out of 3 episodes. I think the one that had me the most so far is the one where I am talking about energy stuff, rocket mass heaters, wofati and willow feeders.

paul wheaton wrote:
There are suggestions in this thread about possibly better ways to do this. I would like to suggest to the suggestor to be the change you wish to see. Exercise the better business model.

I've got no interest in making money selling videos. My suggestion was intended as a respectful, constructive response to this.

Cassie Langstraat wrote:
- trying to figure out how to get this documentary into the eyes of more people

I like the content but was frustrated that I do not have the hour+ every day to keep up with the free content, and didn't learn about it until the first few had expired already. So I feel like I've kind of missed this, whereas if it was say 3 episodes up for a fortnight, then a deal to pay for the other 9 episodes, I would be more inclined to get hooked and convinced it was worth the upsell, rather than thinking awe I missed out on finding what this was all about I'll go and look at something else instead.

There are 30 times as many people looking at this one single thread on permies.com than have watched the video on youtube each evening even tho it is free and being promoted thru a variety of partners. Your brand, Paul, is stronger than theirs, I'm thinking there are many ways you can get this documentary into the eyes of more people.

BOOM.. nate is amazing, he's doing an all weekend replay of ALL of the 12 episodes that started super duper early satuday morning and goes all the way til late sunday night.

on saturday or sunday go to THIS WEBPAGE, enter your name and email, and you will be taken directly to the web page where you can watch all 12 episodes free of charge until Sunday at midnight. (if you are already signed up, i'm assuming you will get an email with a link to watch all of them)


ALSO, if you wanna buy the entire series at 40% off so you can have it foreverrrrr and have access to all episodes and behind the scenes access to all interviews, you can see ownership options here: Click HERE To Buy Em All!

This whole series is like a collection of 200 youtube videos featuring "our peeps". In just focusing on the people that we already have relationships with ...

episode 1: Searching for Sustainable Solutions
15:08 marjory on home grown food
15:38 jacqueline on putting the humanity back in food
20:49 marjory on the value of good soil
26:01 sergei on the value of the simplicity of wildcrafting
27:46 me on the the value of using permaculture
28:43 toby on the definition of permaculture
39:06 howard on the value of health

episode 2: Sustainable Food, Water, and Soil
7:54 me on how chem ag degrades soils
10:05 marjory on the motivation for food safety
20:41 zach on getting a better understanding of nature
30:09 marjory on setting the goal of growing half of your own food
32:12 sergei on the value of eating local food
33:54 jacqueline on building a plethora of life
36:02 zach on greenhouse design - growing tropical plants in montana
47:05 marjory on cover cropping
59:29 me on chem ag subsidy
1:03:20 me on the definition of permaculture
1:03:47 zach on the definition of permaculture
1:04:17 toby on how the time for permaculture is now
1:06:17 me on how permaculture is a framework
1:06:50 jacqueline on how she started with permaculture
1:07:32 howard on the difference between permaculture and conventional ag
1:09:40 toby on permaculture guilds
1:15:41 zach on what a holzer garden look like
1:19:24 jacqueline on being in love with the plethora of life her effort has brought
1:21:14 marjory on her discovery of a better lifestyle
1:22:04 me on build good things rather than be angry at bad guys

Episode 3: Sustainable Health
7:11 sergei on family illness and ditching conventional healthcare
16:01 me on cancer and my ideas on how to eliminate cancer
37:07 jacqueline on how healthy food is rooted in healthy soil
1:07:16 marjory on food safety

Episode 4: Sustainable Education, Children, Families, and Parenting
3:59 howard on building agricultural resiliency
6:07 zach on teaching people the basics that should have been picked up as a kid
8:42 howard on being disconnected from nature
16:22 howard on starting small
53:29 zach on sepp's position on the value of teaching nature to children

Episode 5: Social Sustainability - Community Systems and Communal Living
13:24 howard on the value of fostering community
52:52 toby on the value of fostering community

Episode 6: Sustainable Medicine - Herbal Medics, Foraging, and Wild Edibles
9:26 sergei on how he was introduced to wildcrafting
24:12 marjory on the value of garlic
25:19 sergei with my hugel berms teaching everybody the very first step of wildcrafting

Episode 7: Creative Sustainability through Art, Music, and Media

Episode 8: Urban, Suburban, and Rural Sustainability
12:42 toby on urban permaculture
18:48 marjory on gardening when you don't have land
22:42 toby on sustainability in the country vs. the city

Episode 9: Sustainable Energy, Buildings, Resources, and Systems
18:42 me on how the root of war and pollution is often related to energy; climate change; gowing food without irrigation
22:43 me on priorities at the lab; rocket mass heaters; wofati; hot water from compost; willow feeder
39:09 me: nate edited up my willow feeder stuff so that it is clearly defined in a very small space
50:04 me on getting out of the rat race by building knowledge
53:35 marjory on calorie focused gardening

Episode 10: Sustainable Business, Economics, Finances, and Politics
6:06 toby on his passion for patterns
23:34 me on residual income streams and getting out of the rat race
26:03 dave on moving from the corporate world to making a living while making a global difference
57:05 me on politics

Episode 11: Sustainable Spirituality - Plant, People, and Animal Reverence
4:14 howard on permaculture ethics
8:05 jacqueline on planting carrots with reverence
21:11 marjory on connecting more with plants and animals
29:15 jacqueline on reverence for bees
38:25 dave on mason bees
54:07 jacqueline with more on honey bees

Episode 12: Sustainability in Action - Where to Go from Here
4:14 toby on how he is hopeful about the future
16:24 marjory on how easy it is to just start growing your own food
27:03 sergei on how foraging is a component of solving the world's problems
29:32 dave on encouraging gardeners to make bee havens
38:12 zach on how connecting with nature and your food sources improves your quality of life
1:02:07 howard on philosophy
1:04:55 jacqueline on love what you do

paul wheaton wrote:Looky thar! It's me!

I thought that you you one of the best snippets in the entire 12 shows when you talked above moving the subsidies from chem ag to organic ag as a way of changing the system. Not stroking; just saying. LOL

You guys are soo great! I watched the first 2 episodes, but after that i had no time and was very disappointed to miss all the good stuff. You guys made it possible for me to watch em all, thanks a lot! Peace & Love from Heidelberg, Germany, the future permaculture-city (if my efforts succeed...)

good mix of beginner and more advanced ideas. Thanks for making these accessible.

hey all - just a heads up, Nate is doing another all weekend replay of ALL of the 12 episodes that will be available to watch beginning January 22nd for a free 72 hour period, til the 24th.

on any of those days, go to THIS WEBPAGE, enter your name and email, and you will be taken directly to the web page where you can watch all 12 episodes free of charge until the 24th at midnight. (if you are already signed up, i'm assuming you will get an email with a link to watch all of them)

It doesnt work. How do I see this docu-series. I just found out that Toby died

That was a short term thing that is now long gone.  

Permaculture Voices 1 was ten times better.   And the prices were recently dropped on getting permaculture voices 1, 2 and 3 here:  https://permies.com/t/voices123